The pseudo-feminists: TERF’s. This is how cults work.

I must admit I hadn’t heard of this movement until very recently- and what an unpleasant surprise it has been. They represent, for all intents and purposes, the opposite of everything I’ve spent my life believing feminism is about. In fact, the vast majority of their “operation” seems to be a re-hash of classic patriarchy: reducing people to their genitalia and then assigning value based on that.

The most unusual part of all of it is they seem to be blind to the fact that everything they propose regarding the transgendered community is in direct contradiction with what they want for themselves. They take special pleading to a whole new level.

“Applying standards, principles, and/or rules to other people or circumstances, while making oneself or certain circumstances exempt from the same critical criteria.”

We see this over and over again, not least of which was as the title of a post by Roughseasinthemed: If you have a penis, don’t tell me what to think. Or something along those lines. That is, of course, coming from someone who never stops giving people tutorials on her variety of feminism. And not just regarding rights, but even the language we are and are not allowed to use. That’s not to say, at all, that promoting women’s rights is wrong. It isn’t. What is profoundly wrong is the twisted way they do it and the perverted variety of logic that goes along with it.

We don’t want people to tell us what to think, but we want to impose our exclusive vision of gender on the trans community (and society as a whole.)

We don’t want to be judged by our birth sex, but we want trans people (and men in general) to be judged by their birth sex.

We don’t want to be segregated or treated differently because of our birth sex, but we want trans people to be segregated and treated differently.

Where have I seen that thinking before?

And worse of all is how they do it. Cult-like doesn’t even begin to describe it. After my encounter with the TERF’s on Roughseas, I was twitter-bombed. Over 350 messages all along the same lines (and by the same small group of four people, obviously connected to PurpleSage*.) Basically, if you’re against trans-segregation, you’re a supporter of the Rape and Murder of women.

They’ve wrapped up their bigotry in the purest form of demagoguery. It’s suddenly not that they want to exclude trans-people, it’s that they want to “protect women” from transwomen- who of course must be rapists and murderers. Otherwise, they wouldn’t need protection, right? Sadly this is eerily similar to what the Christian extremists have done for a very long time to gay men. They had to protect the children, from us. Why? Because they wanted to make homosexuality and pedophilia synonymous. And that’s exactly what they’re trying to do now by associating transgenderism with rape.

And you don’t need to take my word for it that trans people don’t represent a danger: 15 Experts Debunk Transgender Bathroom Myth

*PurpleSage is the author of this pearl: “The man always seems to have his hand on the woman. Either he puts an arm around her, or just a hand on her shoulder or her arm, or he wraps his arm around her back. At first glance it would appear to be just an affectionate touch, but what interests me is that I never see women doing this to men. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman standing with her arm on her boyfriend’s arm, or with her hand on his back. Have you ever seen this?…

…”I’m starting to find it gross. I just saw a man doing this today to his female partner who was looking up at him while he talked endlessly and she kept nodding silently and his hand was unnecessarily on her arm. It didn’t look affectionate to me, it looked revolting.”

I completely understand. They’e an odd bunch. As soon as this began I even got a warning message:
“Watch out. Some of these ‘feminists’ can be very aggressive on Twitter. Shrikefem was part of a swarm that attacked me and even went after my kids. I had to block the whole lot of them.”

We hear of rape threats and death threats tweet-stormed at feminists, and they are all the more shocking when you see the actual words. I would like the evidence. I am not particularly shockable, I have been accused of being a rapist by them before. How anyone who can sympathise with a victim of that tactic could use it themself is beyond me.

“A staggering 41% of respondents reported attempting suicide compared to 1.6% of the general population, with rates rising for those who lost a job due to bias (55%), were harassed/bullied in school (51%), had low household income, or were the victim of physical assault (61%) or sexual assault (64%).”

I have placed my hand on a man’s arm as we spoke, or as I spoke to him, and I have a particular fondness for the small of the back on a man and like to have my hand linger there, or around his shoulders, and vice versa. I’m not alone in this as I know other female friends that do just the same. I am agog once again. And I find a deep, heavy sadness to it all; loving touches are to be scrutinised and judged from afar dependant on gender…have a different point of view and be vilified on Twitter. It all gets so nasty and twisted, gender verses gender at some kind of blind war, using cruel and vicious words against each other, and unwittingly against their allies too, if they do not always agree, when equality for all, regardless of gender, is quite possible if people will just open their minds, and dare I say it, their hearts.

Yes, I found the touching comment particularly odd. There’s something seriously disturbing about using that lens to see the world. Having been in relationships with men and women, I never noticed a difference of one gender touching me more or less than the other. It was really down to individual/personal styles.

So, you’re ANOTHER white male who rapes women, eh? What a silly comment. You don’t look white at all. I’d say you’re Hispanic or from somewhere in the Mediterranean. If they’re gonna insult you, the least they could try to be is accurate in regards to your ethnicity. What the fuck’s wrong with people these days?

I learned a brilliant new term recently: naive realism, the belief that one’s own beliefs and opinions represent reality, and that all rational people share all of one’s beliefs and opinions. Now that I have a word for it, I’m finding it everywhere.

It is utterly intellectually bankrupt. But I wouldn’t even mind that so much, if in parallel they did not also feel the need to shut down debate, by censoring other peoples’ views, either by accusing them of abuse, or twitter bombing them, or whatever tactic.

Hmm . . . that’s not quite what Naïve Realism is T.o.M.; that’s more simply arrogance isn’t it? That said, in knowing what Naïve Realism is (as a psychology of perception), then arrogance no longer has a foothold. Now I’m sounding arrogant.

Arrogance is such a pejorative term (and one that people have applied to me rather frequently) that I seldom think of it. Naive realism may be another word for the same thing, but the wording makes me happier. 🙂

Thanks for speaking up. As a agender/non-binary person and a newer member of the trans community, I have seen trans women attacked by this group of people many times. It baffles me because feminist inclusive of trans women and trans femme communities are natural allies against sexism and misogyny.

Something I have noticed about a lot of areas of radical feminism is the way they sum up insecurities about multiculturalism but never overtly condemn it. Muslim culture is currently the big one: they worry greatly about issues that affect women in Sharia and extreme Islamic nations, but will not attribute this worry to their fear of a real patriarchal culture. Instead, they co-opt the fears of women under extreme Islam and fret.

Men dressing as women to commit terrorist acts and infiltrate female spaces is a known issue in nations that embrace strict gender segregation and female modesty laws. Yet first world radical feminists will not attribute it to other nations, they believe it is primarily their personal issue.

Men attacking, injuring and raping women only for the woman to be condemned is a known issue in nations that embrace strict laws on sexuality and whose laws affirm stereotypes about women. Yet first world radical feminists will not attribute it to other nations, they believe it is primarily their personal issue. Even when this issue affects women in first worlds, they do not recognize it as a cultural problem and tone it down, all whilst psyching up every single rape allegation against first world men.

Men physically punishing smaller, weaker women with the sanctions of law enforcement and the approval of the neighbours is a known issue in nations that embrace ideas about female fragility and the role of the father. Yet first world radical feminists will not attribute it to other nations, they believe it is primarily their personal issue.

Men forcing women into marriage, pregnancy and genital mutilation at a young age is a known issue in nations that believe women are weak of mind and designed to be property. Yet first world radical feminists will not attribute it to other nations, they believe it is primarily their personal issue.

First world radical feminists complain vocally about issues that radically impact women under horrific patriarchal laws, yet somehow manage to ignore these women and focus instead on the first world feminists themselves. What’s worse, by declaring non-Western cultures to be a sacred cow which cannot be condemned for their behaviour, we insult both our culture and theirs with the implication that culture transcends humanity. It’s pretty near sighted to claim that we live in a culture where men are permitted and encouraged to infiltrate female spaces, rape women, beat women and use women as tools when we obviously do not and when these are very real issues facing the vastest majority of women in non-Western cultures. /rant

I thought of you today! Did you see the life expectancy statistic? People in the top 5% of income live on average 10 years longer than the other 95%. Perfectly in line with what you were saying at VioletWisp 😉

I had not seen that! Been busy considering the social balance that could be achieved if men were given the right to “legal abortion” as the Swedish Liberal Party’s youth group suggested.

I’m not surprised at that stat, though. Healthcare advantages, better food, lower stress, greater sense of security, better reproductive access… all likely to lengthen life. And, of course, nobody is going to lower the prices of certain life-enhancing medications or explain life-lengthening tricks for free, so rich people are probably more likely to know about resveratrols and body relaxation techniques as well.

Money can also be a direct factor. I’m not exactly poor, I know what it is to be poor and I am fortunate not to be any longer. Yet if I were a 95%-er I would have had a better computer and access to online storage for my last week of work, so that my computer crashing wouldn’t have driven me into a stress spiral I am still locked in. When I die, it will be of stress.

Oh the TERFs, these people are vicious and I stand in fear of them. I really do. I read a long story from one of their victims and what they did to that woman was a crime.

They are relatively new, maybe the last four years or so. One of the leaders at the time I read about them is an attorney, a woman, I forget her name and honestly I don’t want to remember it. She went after a trans woman. The trans woman had posted enough personal information about herself that the TERF went and contacted the woman’s psychiatrist and her employer, that is what I remember, and Inthink I have this right. The poor trans woman was a basket case, the TERF attorney was simply harassing hell out of her, I can’t remember much of the details but I seem to recall that the TERF contacted the woman’s doctor and told the doc that the trans woman was abusing the prescription drugs.

The TERFs were literally vicious, no other word for it. It took a while between reading the TERF’s side of the story and reading the Trans Woman’s story to figure it out, as of course the lawyer was highly skilled at obscurification and deceit and we tend to think attorneys don’t lie. After reading what that leading TERF did to that Transwoman I vowed to stay away from them and not engage them. They are just to much for me to handle, I don’t want nor need that grief in my life.